By Jen Maravegias | News | December 3, 2021 |
By Jen Maravegias | News | December 3, 2021 |
I can’t believe I need to say this but please don’t eat dirt. Even if someone tells you it’s “magic.” ESPECIALLY if someone tells you it’s “magic.”
Up until the end of November, Black Oxygen Organics was on track to become the Next Big Thing in MLMs (multi-level marketing.) The next Lularoe, if you will. But it all came crashing to a halt when the company sent out an email to its sellers abruptly announcing it was shutting down, right before Thanksgiving. Womp womp.
Marc Saint-Onge is the founder and CEO of Black Oxygen Organics, also known as “BOO” in the private social media groups where sellers recruit new members and trade product “success stories.” He’s been selling dirt to people under one name or another for about 25 years, ever since the Canadian government charged him with practicing medicine without a license. That hasn’t stopped him from making wild medical claims about his products. An earlier version of his dirt, the “Anti-Rheuma Bath,” was pulled off the market because he said it could treat arthritis, rheumatism and heal wounds (may also change water into wine). People have been drinking, eating, snorting, cooking with, and bathing in BOO for a couple of years now. Users claim it cures diseases, rids the body of toxins and heavy metals, makes their teeth whiter, regrows hair, expels worms from the body, and all sorts of other things. More importantly, in recent months, people have started claiming that it can cure Covid, or prevent you from catching it. No wonder it’s known as “Magic Dirt.”
The company’s now-defunct website indicates Saint-Onge scoured the peat bogs of Canada to find the best, most pristine dirt full of fulvic acid (that’s the magic ingredient, y’all.) He then packaged that dirt in 4-ounce bags, as pills, or bottles of mud for about $100 a pop. According to an NBC News investigation, sellers were enticing new members with promises of big paychecks, “I earned $21,000 in bonuses in my first 5 weeks!” That’s pretty standard for the MLM game. The keyword there is bonuses. Remember, if you make more in bonuses than you do in product sales it’s a pyramid scheme!
This very expensive dirt and mud saw a boom in business this past year because its healing properties were applied to Covid. The pandemic was a godsend to BOO. Sales shot up from $200,000 a month to nearly $4 million according to a company VP in September, as the anti/de-vax movement grew here in the US and Canada. Social media played a huge part in this. Videos were posted to Facebook of people bathing their kids in mud, shared BOO Brownie recipes, and of the worms and bugs users were claiming that the mud drew out of their bodies.
Now, just hear me out for a second. Is it possible, maybe, that the bag of dirt was the source of the bugs and worms in the first place? Guess we’ll never know.
@bertalikewhoa Reply to @_scarlet326 what if the bugs are coming from INSIDE THE BAG!? 😱 ##boo ##blackoxygenorganics ##fulvicacid ##antimlmeducation ##booiswoo ##antimlm
♬ original sound - Roberta Blevins
Although company leaders requested that sellers tone down their language and most of the groups flipped their status to Private, removing Black Oxygen Organics/BOO from their names and rebranding to seem more focused on fulvic acid in an attempt to address their “compliance situation” (that’s code for we’re being investigated and are about to get sued) that didn’t stop the Covid Denial Crew from joining up en masse, boosting membership numbers this year. Nothing can stop those people. Maybe we should just let them eat dirt.
Of course we shouldn’t! Or, at least, the government couldn’t. Canada issued a recall of all of Black Oxygen Organic products in the fall, leaving sellers high and dry, with much lighter wallets than they started with. That’s generally how all of these stories end, isn’t it? Most of these stories don’t involve ingesting a product scientists confirmed, “two servings of BOO exceeded Health Canada’s daily limits for lead, and three servings — a dose recommended on the package — approached daily arsenic limits.”
Anti-MLM activists also used Google Maps to determine that the bog where Saint-Onge said he was digging up this dirt borders a landfill. So lead, arsenic, and garbage. The trifecta! To be honest, I wouldn’t really care because I know you can’t fix stupid. Except people are giving this stuff to their kids.
@kims.antimlm I had SS but felt weird posting them. But seriously, wtf is wrong with people. #blackoxygenorganics #antimlm #antimultilevelmarketing
♬ original sound - Kim’s anti mlm
Please stop poisoning your children, people. They are not guinea pigs. Their little tiny bodies mostly work perfectly. Like, factory settings perfect. They don’t need your nasty mud on their feet or in their food. The lengths to which Covid deniers, anti-vaxxers, and de-vaxxers are willing to go just to avoid getting a shot in the arm continues to be astounding. All of their talk about “Big Pharma” making money off of drugs they don’t want to take, they seem to keep missing the giant elephant of multi-level marketing schemes standing right in front of them.
So, to wrap up this year’s MAGA, Covid-denying, anti-science crowd’s activities: they won’t wear masks, they won’t get the vaccine, but they blame the government for not being able to put an end to the pandemic. While also believing the dead shall rise to rule us and that eating dirt is good for you. Please remember that these people vote. So, the next time we have an election, you should too.
Source: NBC News